USWNT moves on with a tie

Team USA advanced to the knockout stage in women’s soccer at the Tokyo Olympics, despite sleepily and sloppily winning just one of its three roundrobin games in Group G.

The U.S. Women’s National Team secured the point it needed to reach the quarterfinals Tuesday with a lackluster and mostly uneventful scoreless draw against Australia in Kashima.

The top-ranked Americans, who received two saves from goalie Alyssa Naeher in the dual clean sheet, and the Aussies finished the group stage tied with four points (1-1-1) apiece. Both teams advanced to the quarterfinals, with the U.S. winning the tiebreaker based on a better goal differential.

“Coming into this game, we came in with the mindset that the first goal was to win the game, and the second goal was to put in a good, professional performance and not get scored on,” U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski said. “Obviously we didn’t accomplish the first one, but we did accomplish the second one, which was very important because ultimately it put us in the same place.

“Whatever we feel like we need to do to win the [next] game, we’re going to present it to them and then let them do their job.”

Team USA will face the Netherlands, which won Group 4, in a rematch of the 2019 World Cup finals at 7 a.m. ET Friday in Yokohama. The U.S. squad was knocked out by Sweden in penalty kicks in the Olympic quarterfinals in 2016 in Brazil before capturing its fourth World Cup title in 2019.

The USWNT dropped its opening match to group-winner Sweden last week (3-0) before rebounding with a 6-1 victory over New Zealand. The top two finishers in each group and the two best third-place finishers advanced to the quarterfinals. Australia, ranked ninth in the FIFA world rankings, advanced as one of the third-place finishers.

Alex Morgan had a potential goal on a header disallowed by VAR (Video Assistant Referee) in Tuesday’s 33rd minute, when she was ruled offside on a corner kick taken by Kelley O’Hara.